Sparks

So bear with me... is Auxiliary all-the-way-dead? Because even Auxiliary says there will be a small piece of him left. Not enough to give him personality or communication, but enough to power Auxiliary's corpse as a weapon. If Mayalaran can be awoken (at least partially) by Adolin, as a mostly-dead-but-still-present Shardblade/spren, I guess I have to ask, why can't Sigzil do the same with Auxiliary's corpse? Best guess is something about a spren using it's own essence to be burned as Investiture-fuel instead of being garden variety killed by oathbreaking renders the death different, as in the damage is irrecoverable.

Sounds like the TimeTeller is writing a new book called The Frugal Surgebinder's Handbook for Surviving the Medieval Cosmere.

Love the Shardcast! Listening to it, I can't help but compare the relationship between Radiants and their spren and Adolin with Maya. Specifically, the Radiants tend to be broken people for which their spren and the bond/relationship to their spren are positive, healing influences in their lives that further the emotional health and development of their human partners. In contrast, Adolin is the closest we see to a human spren. If there was a spren of nurturing and loyalty I imagine it would look and sound a lot like Adolin! But maybe that's why Adolin and Maya work, and why they're so unique. Maya is maybe the broken one in the relationship - and to regain her former health and potential, she needs a spren of her own. A spren named Adolin.

Helaran was a candidate if not a squire for the Skybreakers, so it seems like the spren had already decided Helaran was pretty interesting. I don’t think it’s necessarily more guilt - I think with RoW Shallan has made enough of a breakthrough with regards to undeserved guilt for her past that it wouldn’t be an issue - but “I killed my mother and triggered the True Desolation” is a juicy tidbit for a Fourth or Fifth Ideal for Shallan.

I personally think (T)Odium’s champion is gonna be Ishar, because his corruption / madness making him believe Dalinar is the real Odium’s champion in RoW is excellent foreshadowing. I also think Ishar was Rayse’s original choice for champion for this reason. But, if Taravangian goes for the draw / breaking of the contract, it will happen along these lines: T reveals himself to somebody Dalinar loves. (Navani / Renarin / Adolin / etc) He explains how he killed Rayse and how the contest is pointless because he has no further designs on exterminating humans or continuing the human / singer war any longer than he has to. He then reveals that in the event Dalinar loses he forfeits his soul, and then cuts a second deal that would make them (T)Odium’s willing champion: be my champion, not to beat Dalinar, but to force him to break the contest. In return, I will spare Dalinar and his soul, return Alethkar and Herdaz, and end the human / singer war on Roshar. And since the contest is broken, Honor’s restrictions on Odium are null and void. I can see someone that loves Dalinar very much taking that deal for fear of losing him. I also think the contest is like Sadeas being murdered: it’s going to end up being a short part of Book 5. Maybe wrapped up in the first 2 sections or so. Because in my mind, the main conflict of Book 5 is gonna be Taravangian freed, and Dalinar / Navani throwing together a hodgepodge revised Oathpact to restrain not the Fused, but Odium himself. The twenty year jump between 5 and 6 will be the time it takes for Odium to break the new Heralds.

I really liked Cytonic. Maybe not loved it like the SA series, but above all I like how Brandon is keeping things fresh by not just telling the story of Skyward Part 2 and Skyward Part 3 in the sequels. Cytonic and even Starsight were about Spensa growing up from a child soldier with a limited perspective into a fully developed person with a view for the bigger picture. As for specifics: - David Bowie. Lol. I’m dead! Come to think of it, you can’t convince me David Bowie was (is) not Cytonic. - Chet’s 2nd swerve caught me off guard, and it suddenly made so much more of the first 2 Acts make sense. - The revelation that all the delvers are the same (not a hive mind), with the same emotional trauma, was a trip. I don’t think the solution to the delvers will be to make them “real”. Looking at the pentad of Spensa, Doomslug, Chet, M-Bot, and Hensho flying into the unknown - that’s how Spensa defeats the delvers. She’s living their solution to the “noise” right now. - So if Spensa rescues M-Bot, will M-Bot manifest in the realverse as a delver? Or something new? - If I held up a picture of a delver, and a picture of a Cognitive shadow, would they be the same picture? - Why can’t Cytonics Hyperjump in the nowhere again? So Hyperjumps are using the nowhere to connect points A and B in the realverse through a shortcut. Why can’t a Cytonic use the realverse to connect points A and B in the nowhere? - Spensa popping in unexpectedly on Jorgen repeatedly is the better version of Rey doing the same to Ben in Star Wars. - I’m glad I’m not on Spensa’s ground crew. Every book ends with her starfighter destroyed! What is this, the Star Trek movies? - Now I want a Wing Commander video game series based on the Skyward series. Cytonic would definitely be the Privateer game.

Ironsides and Cobb, of course! Brade and Nedd for the runner-up.

Oh Jorgen. Great read! I couldn't put it down. Edit: I've always felt since Starsight that the Superiority felt like Ba Sing Se from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Now in ReDawn, it feels even more so, just going full Dai Li unhinged insanity!

I feel like if you intertwine the novellas with Cytonic it would have made its own Stormlight Archive-sized Skyward novel! For the most part I loved it. We get to explore FM the person, and I feel like both FM and Jorgen get some significant character growth. Although it felt a little off that Jorgen seemed to be taking out some of his frustration on the taynix slugs at the beginning. I missed Nedd's humorous Eeyore routine - he had a lot more to say in Skyward than in Sunreach. I felt the one piece that was really missing from Sunreach was FM's family. We know she must have an interesting family background - growing up into a Disrupter from the privileged Deep Caverns. I wish it could have taken more of a front seat in FM's story. Spensa's family obviously played a huge part in Skyward. I bet Jorgen's family will play a big part in Evershore. Shoot, Jorgen's family played a much bigger part in FM's story than FM's family!

I like the other replies that are hypothesizing that Ishar is trying to reverse the process of becoming a cognitive shadow, i.e. getting his old body and existence back so he can leave the Roshar system. In another post about this, I also hypothesized that Ishar was trying create artificial Surgebinders, by bringing Radiant spren into the Physical Realm (notice how it's only Radiant spren that he's experimenting on), and dissecting them. I believe Ishar is trying to find out if there is something about the Radiant spren themselves that enable the Nahel bond and Surgebinding, and if so, try to remove it and use it to Surgebind without having to bond a Radiant spren. In essence: can Ishar create more Honorblade-like devices? It's a concept that Brandon explored in his Reckoners non-cosmere series.

My apologies if someone’s talked about this before, but I didn’t find it in a search. What’s going on when Kaladin is fighting the Pursuer after Teft dies? Stormlight powered Surgebinders are left unconscious and drained, even after Lift wakes them up with Lifelight. The the Pursuer attacks Kaladin directly going against Moash’s (Odium’s?) orders, and then Kaladin gets a power up. Not through Ideals, not through Stormlight or the bond with Syl, but through...something else? His eyes glow “yellow / red”. Red is Odium / Voidlight, but what does the yellow represent? How is a human using Voidlight, if he is? Is Odium tempting him with power to corrupt Kaladin from within? Was it driving a wedge between Kaladin and Syl, causing her to become more distant up until the Fourth Ideal was sworn? It actually reminded me of Amaram after he swallowed the Unmade at the end of Oathbringer.

While Teft's spren is dead, dead for Invested beings can mean mostly dead, not all the way dead. All Phendorana needs is for someone to take her to Miracle Max!

Bondsmiths could likely form Plate after swearing their own 4th Ideal - Stormfather specifically says "I will not be a mere Blade for you" to Dalinar. Plate is made of associated lesser spren, so Stormfather wouldn't have to do anything.

I feel like it was a big hint at the origins of the Unmade. I bet we get some origin scenes or talk of how Sja-anat came to be when it's time.

I am reminded of another Brandon scene, in a non-Cosmere book. In Firefight, in the Reckoners series, the heroes learn that the tech granting super powers is literally powered by pieces of the people who (used to) have super powers. In a similar vein, given the mad genius of Ishar, I expect he was experimenting with the dead, given bodies of Radiant spren to determine if there is a way to Surgebind without the Nahel bond. As in, chop up the Radiant sprens' manifested physical bodies, and determine if there are pieces of those manifested bodies that can be used to fabricate artificial Surgebinding. In a way, it makes a lot of sense. Fabrials are tech that trap spren externally and use their abilities. Ishar is trying to see if he can create an anti-Fabrial.